Slideshow: Back to the garden

Recovering addicts find roots in the soil of New Mexico

The Hoy Recovery Program in northern New Mexico is helping heroin addicts reconnect with the land. Since the mid-1990s, the network of Spanish-speaking villages in the Espanola Valley has had
the highest per capita rate of heroin-related death in the United
States -- more than New York, Baltimore or any other U.S. city. Hoy's director Ben Tafoya envisions a sustainable community in an inpatient clinic in the village of Velarde, where acres of land could be cultivated in order to feed both body and soul. This summer -- the garden's first year -- row upon row of bright yellow squash blossoms spread before the clinic,
and corn stalks reached a few feet high. The facility, which housed so
much anguish and frustration, looked like a vibrant scene from a Van
Gogh painting.